By Jason Kim: Thus far, 13,000 tickets have been sold for tonight’s clash between WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (45-0-1, 31 KO’s) and #3 WBC Andy Lee (28-1, 20 KO’s) for their fight at the Sun Bowl, in El Paso, Texas.

An additional 7000 fans are expected to walk up tonight to purchase tickets to round out the total ticket sales at 20,000 sold. This is far short of the 35,000 that was originally expected to show up. However, it’s still a great number for a fighter that isn’t considered to be the #1 fighter in the middleweight division. Chavez Jr. arguably is perhaps the #5 or #6 in the division behind Sergio Martinez, Felix Sturm, Gennady Golovkin, and Dmitry Pirog. After tonight, Chavez Jr. may positioned behind Andy Lee.

Chavez Jr. isn’t as popular as his famous father Julio Cesar Chavez Sr. yet, but if his promoter Bob Arum con somehow keep Chavez Jr. winning, he could end up being nearly as popular. For that to happen, Chavez Jr. will have to beat the likes of Martinez, Sturm, Golovkin and Pirog. If Chavez Jr. moves up in weight to the 168 pound division, he’ll have to beat fighters like Andre Ward, Carl Froch, Mikkel Kessler and Lucian Bute.

Those are very tough opponents and looking at how Chavez Jr. has performed lately, I’d give him very little chance of even beating one of those fighters. The same goes for the top middleweights. Chavez Jr. has done well with the fighters that Arum has matched him with, but you’ll notice that none of those fighters have had the name Sergio Martinez, Golovkin, Sturm or Pirog. In other words, Chavez Jr. has been carefully matched and not put in with the really dangerous fighters thus far.

Tonight, Chavez Jr. will be facing one of the best in the division in Andy Lee. I personally rate Lee behind the top guys, but he’s still good enough to give Chavez Jr. a lot of problems and possibly beat him tonight unless he fights a stupid fight by standing close to Chavez Jr.